“Christian Girls”

The start-stop dynamics and serrated vocal hooks of London, Ontario's Single Mothers instantly remind one of the early 2000's, when At the Drive-In, the Blood Brothers, and other sorely missed bands combined math-rock, emo and hardcore into something so scarily close to pop, they couldn't help but implode. The plot engine of "Christian Girls", however, is something more timeless: man gets rejected by woman and turns it into the most pressing global concern imaginable.

In the span of 142 seconds, Andrew Thomson projects his frustration onto concepts vast enough to make it a fair fight, but he can't find a single suitable explanation for his inability to get some after tearing down the entire courtship process ("This ain't a date, it's just coffee!"), human vanity ("Jealousy's attention to the ones who can get it/ Something like coming in second") and organized religion ("I thought it's 'cause she's a Christian/ Turns out the girl just wasn't with it"). Thomson's almost entirely quotable on his own account here, but "Christian Girls" happens because Thomson took to heart something he heard elsewhere: "You gotta write about what you know."